In a recent interview, Assassin’s Creed IV game director Ashraf Ismail has revealed that Ubisoft’s execs have begun to plot the eventual ending to the long-running series. Ismail discusses how each title folds into the overall story arc, and that Ubisoft has “an idea” of how–and when–the end will come about.

“We have multiple development teams, then we have the brand team that sits on top and is filled with writers and designers concerned with the series’ overall arc,” Ismail began. “So there is an overall arc, and each iteration has its place inside this.

“We have an idea of where the end is, what the end is. But of course Yves [Guillemot] announced we are a yearly title, we ship one game a year.

“So depending on the setting, depending on what fans want, we’ve given ourselves room to fit more in this arc. But there is an end.“

To date, the Assassin’s Creed franchise has an expansive canon that stretches across different facets of media; from graphic novels to fiction–and soon even a feature length film–the series isn’t just limited to games. Even the yearly releases encompass a plethora of platfor All of these different sources fall into the fold as well and add to the expansive pool of the Assassin’s Creed mythos, fleshing out the universe and adding new tangents to explore for the beginnings–and endings–to the story as a whole.

Ismail goes on to disclose the advantages of having multiple game projects in development, as the dev teams are able to interact with one another and build upon ideas to open up new doors in terms of story arcs for future releases as well as plot twists for the current ones.

Every new releases offers pathways and new horizons to explore that can organically grow and intertwine with one another, especially when writers and developers share and pool their ideas.

“We’re now able to seed stuff earlier and earlier in our games,” Ismail continued. “So for example in [Black Flag] we have Edward, who was seeded in AC3. But there’s a lot more stuff in our game that is hinting at other possibilities.”

Ubisoft will no-doubt continue to use this process to not only maintain and polish the story line for current titles, but also to pave the way for upcoming releases–and eventually the end of the franchise. It will be interesting to see how this structure affects the future of the Assassin’s Creed universe, and if we’ll see a dynamic “seeding” of a character from Black Flag incorporated into AC5.

Additionally there have been recent reports on info for the fifth installment of Assassin’s Creed, as Eurogamer reveals that Ubisoft’s planned 2014 AC release will be developed by Ubisoft Toronto (Splinter Cell: Blacklist), which is headed by Jade Raymond, one of the series’ original co-creators.

In its current state, AC4: Black Flag looks to be one of the major releases of the year, with the next-gen ports delivering stellar in-game performances–especially on the PS4. For a detailed analysis on Black Flag be sure to check out our official E3 playthrough coverage that was showcased on the PlayStation 4.

Ismail doesn’t reveal any particulars on what Ubisoft has planned for the end of Assassin’s Creed, and only reveals that its currently in a “rough draft” state–but it’ll assuredly go out with a bang.